Technology

Two posts on the same day and both techie – don’t be put off, normal ranty service may well be resumed soon…

I’ve used my Windows Mobile in the past as a tethered modem for me eee pc when out and about without WiFi, it’s not always been easy but has been handy to have around!

I reinstalled my eee today, and was looking around for how I’m going to achieve this same functionality with the Milestone on Android, almost everything screamed “root your device” at me. I’m not a fan of rooting it for a lot of reasons the biggest being I don’t want to brick the device – so that’s a non-starter.

Then I spotted a handy guide from linux magazine on Tethering Android, it didn’t work straight off which was a little disappointing. So a little more digging on the Android forums, produced some additional instructions. I’m producing them here for my own benefit as well as yours – as I’m bound to forget.

1. Install “Proxoid” app from Marketplace.
   
   
2. Turn on USB debugging mode on your phone:
   
   Settings – > Application -> Development -> Enable USB Debugging
   
   
3. On your Ubuntu machine create a 90-android.rules file:
   
   gksudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/90-android.rules
   
   
4. Add the following to it (note this is the difference from the linux magazine tutorial):
   
   
SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0bb4", ATTRS{idProduct} =="0c01", MODE="0666", OWNER="*insertyourusername"
SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0bb4", ATTRS{idProduct} =="0c02", MODE="0666", OWNER="*insertyourusername"
SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="22b8", ATTRS{idProduct} =="41db", MODE="0666", OWNER="*insertyourusername"

   * insert your username as appropriate!
   
   
5. Download and unpack the latest release of the Android SDK: http://developer.android.com/sdk/
   
   
6. Connect the phone to the Ubuntu machine with your USB cable and start Proxoid on the phone.
   
   
7. Open a Terminal, navigate to the tools directory in the Android SDK folder and run the following command:
   ./adb forward tcp:8080 tcp:8080
   
   

The proxy server should now be running, but to be able to use it with Firefox, you have to modify the browser’s proxy settings:

1. In Firefox, choose Edit -> Preferences and switch to the Advanced -> Network section.
   
   
2. Press the Settings button in the Configure how Firefox connects to the Internet group.
   
   
3. Select the Manual proxy configuration option, then enter localhost in the HTTP Proxy field and 8080 in the Port field. Press OK to save the settings and close the window.
   
   

Now you can browse the Web using the created connection.

Given that I’ll need to remember how to do this, when I don’t have a connection. Here’s a handy PDF with the above guide to tethering android to put on your android device!!

I know I haven’t posted in a while – but I’ve had lots going on…. Then my first post back is a techie one, I apologise (well for some of you I do anyway!).

I want a backup battery for my Motorola Droid/Milestone, I’ve already got one for my iPod Touch and it’s invaluable – but I figure if I get one with a straight USB out it can charge almost any of my devices with the right cable! This makes far more sense to me, so today I went hunting. Would you believe how hard these things are to find?

I’ve been offered rechargable batteries, battery chargers, spare batteries for the phone all sorts of things – none of which were quite what I wanted, I think this boils down to not knowing what to search for – generally most of what I found was listed as:

“Rechargeable Backup Battery Pack USB”

I’ve found to, one by an unknown manufacturer (PINES) and one by Kensington, so I start doing a little comparison on them, the features I need are:

• Small
• Light
• Capacity

Shouldn’t be that hard really, nobody can play with dimensions or weight (although there will probably be trade-offs for capacity!) but they’re pretty much standard:

Almost sold then, Kensington tell me lots of information about their pack and it’s 7wH capacity, compared to Pines 4800mAh?
Wait a minute…. Are we comparing apples with apples and beans with beans here?

What are wH and how do we convert them to mAH?

I found a useful link on camerahacker with conversions, so let’s crunch the numbers.. It’s probably easier to convert the Pines product so it is also in wH

watt = amp * volt

So,

Wh = 4.8Ah * 5.5VDC (Note we've converted the mAh to Ah by dividing it by 1000)
Wh = 26.4

Compared to the Kensington device – that’s huge! 26.4Wh vs 7Wh (and it’s cheaper!)…
Have I got something wrong here?

Most people that know me know that I love my mobile phone, and it has to be a good one – simply because I run the business from it!

I rang Orange the other day to enquire what was currently on offer, and as usual they don’t have a single phone that interests me… The HTC Touch Pro 2 I did fancy is available, but not as an upgrade. I’m not convinced I want an iPhone as I’ve got my iPod Touch and it really does lack a keyboard that I need. Even if they had got a phone I’m not sure I’d upgrade because every contract is 18 or 24 months – what happened to 12 month contracts?

Locking in for 24 months on a contract seems ridiculous to me, Orange did tell me that I’d had my current phone for nearly 2 years! I had to ask them what phone they thought I’d got, they were wrong – that one has been in a box for at least a year! Technology changes so quickly that I want a bit more freedom than a 24 month contract.

So I’m in deep discussions with them at the moment about moving to a low contract Business SIM-only probably with 30 day rolling contract for £15 and a huge data bolt-on, from there I can always upgrade with them at any point I choose…

However, to make sure I have a phone I want I’ve gone SIM Free and ordered the Motorola DROID (yes, I know – for those that know me they’ll know I’ve only just left the company!). So here it is…

More posts to follow on this subject I’m sure…

I’ve had a really busy week this week, so busy that I didn’t notice it was the Business Startup show at Olympia yesterday and today, I debated getting on the road early this morning and coming back early but as I have family here for the weekend it seemed a little silly.. So a little blue yesterday I browsed the web for some startup information to make up for it.

That’s when I came across 24 Hour Startup, where a group of people from Nonsense have decided to build a web-based startup and launch it all in 24 hours.. I love this idea!!

At midday yesterday they didn’t even know what they would be building, as of this morning it has a name, a logo, code, and it’s own blog, AND it will launch in just 3 hours time! This is an amazing achievement and if Neil Cocker’s estimates are anything to go buy it could make a lot of money (hey why aren’t I doing this?!).

Now as I was feeling blue yesterday and they’ve brightened my day, I’m hoping they’ll let me have the Blue gift for writing this blog post and putting it out on Twitter! Plus I think was @dr_hue’s second friend!?

You may remember I banged on for months about wanting a Touch Pro and Orange couldn’t decide if they were going to get it… Eventually I opted for getting one from Vodafone (SIM free through a colleague). It’s a great phone, but has a few quirks and I’ve been hanging out for the HTC Touch Pro 2.

Yep, I’m still resisting the iPhone (much as I use my iPod Touch for loads of things now!) as I have the usual concerns:

• Will I have listened to music all day and not have enough juice to make a call or check my email.
• Can’t put a spare battery in it.

Plus it does mean leaving Orange after almost 15 years as a customer.

So, I was quite excited when I heard Orange were getting the HTC Touch Pro 2, a really nice looking device and quite an upgrade on the original HTC Touch Pro! A 3.2 MP Camera is still a bit of a failing on it – but I’m not buying it for the camera, it would be for that great slide-out QWERTY keyboard…

Orange were very much in a state of “It’s coming”, “It’s coming”, “It’s in test”, “We’re testing it”, “We’ll be getting limited stock next week”, “We’ve sold out of current stock” all the usual when a great new handset comes out…

I did get them to quote me for a handset whilst it was out of stock and it was only £50 cheaper than buying it SIM-Free!!

проститутки кaзaнь цены

So whilst debating whether I’d be better buying it SIM-Free (and not getting tied into a new contract), Orange have discontinued the HTC Touch Pro 2 already.. It’s almost like it never launched…

• порно 80 х

Most disappointed, now I have the SIM-Free or Switch to Vodafone debate to have!

If you can see this, all has gone well – if you can’t I’m probably talking to myself (nothing unusual there!!).

My current permalink structure has not sat well with me for the last year or so, it’s kind of thrown together and doesn’t look particularly nice… I’ve been itching to change it, but never dared (after all this blog has a reasonable PageRank and gets a decent amount of traffic!). The time has come to bite the bullet.

I know what you’re saying:

“Just go ahead – change the damned things – why should we care?”

Well it’s not quite that simple, changing them has a few knock on effects:

1. All my internal links to older posts referencing them will be broken.
2. All links by other people to my older posts will be broken (this is really bad in my opinion as I can’t contact them all to fix them!).
3. The search engines probably won’t like me much any more (and I quite like them, so this is also quite bad!).

Solutions

Well I put out my request on Twitter and got all of two responses (and one retweet), the first didn’t understand the question at all and suggested I just change them and install All-in-one SEO. The second was more useful and suggested the Platinum SEO plugin (my concern with this is how it might react with my already install All-in-one SEO).

This really leaves me with the Permalink Redirect plugin which sounds like it might do exactly what I want through 301 redirects. I’ve heard good things about Dean Lee’s Permalink Migration plugin, so I think we’ll give that one a go!

Well it seems to have worked – but I’m convinced that the databae should be updated – that would make more sense to me than a permanent 301 redirect… Is that possible?

I normally login to my admin site to find “Spam: 3,472” comments (or some such other high and random number!!).

Confession time. I broke my blog last week whilst doing an upgrade (trying to auto-upgrade post suPHP being activated may have been a mistake) and it forced me to audit my plugins.

I’ve always like the idea of Akismet, group filtering etc. However I spotted some of the comments over at the WP-SpamFree plugin page and decided I’d got nothing to lose (other than a lot of time wasted looking at comment spam!

Installed earlier in the week and 3 days later I have JUST 3 Spam comments…

Elizabeth: The Golden Age psp I’m a happy man – Matt you should think about this plugin!